✶ ✶ ✶
Twilight spun around to look for the source of the voice behind her, but what she found standing just inside the shattered panoramic window of the Ponyville Palace throne room was not what she had expected.
She had originally called Gemini a starbeast, though she had been no beast. It had been a relief, at the time, not to have to think about it once the two-headed being had sealed its fate by giving up its stars and thrusting them upon Twilight. That should have been the end of it—a static being of stale magic left to dissipate harmless on the wind. As Gemini had just said, though, some part of that assumption had been wrong.
What stood before Twilight now was not a lost and confused starbeast, nor was it an empty husk of magic acting out the final sentiments of an absent soul, but something far more distressing.
It was an alicorn. She looked like a pony stretched tall, bright-eyed and intelligent, and from the look on her face, it wanted to eat her… possibly in more ways than just the one. Actually, on closer inspection, no—just the one. Twilight was kind of insulted as the mare strutted forward with an air of menace about her that was completely lacking in the kind of suave geniality that Nightmare Moon had had.
Wait, no. Focus, Twilight, focus! You have a—okay, you don’t technically have a marefriend, but you have an inevitable marefriend which is the same thing, really—not that it matters because this alicorn clearly hates your guts anyway and you need to pay attention.
Each feature of the alicorn’s form was a study in contrasts, the most striking being the proper aetherial mane streaming out behind her; Twilight’s heart skipped a beat—in irrational fear, not that other thing—when she saw a moon much like Luna’s, light on one side and dark on the other, and she had to tighten her stars around Luna’s moon to reassure herself that it was still there.
“You—what?” Twilight stammered out, backing away and shielding Rarity with her wing. “Gemini? How?”
“Don’t call me that!” she snapped, seething in anger. “Did you think I wouldn’t discover how the name you gave me tied me to you? I am not some broken thing—I am Astri!”
“You should be dead,” Twilight blurted out.
“No, you should be dead, broken child!” Gemini—Astri—reared up and stomped her hooves, splintering the crystal floor and snarling. Far from the mockery she had been before, there was no denying that this was a real, physically manifest alicorn. The only sign of her previous two-headed form was the twin voices she spoke with. “You should not exist! That you linger on as dust on the wind did nothing to prevent me from reclaiming the greatest of my body from the dragons’ embrace.”
“Reclaiming…” On closer inspection, the moon in Astri’s mane was different; rough in shape and twisted. Instead of the clean separation between light and dark that Luna’s moon had, it blended from one to the other in a pattern that was spattered and speckled—a pattern that was duplicated in reverse on her coat. Twilight looked back to the crude moon in Astri’s mane, horrified. “That’s what happened to Las Pegasus; you went looking for the largest chunks of moonrock you could find and—and ripped them out of the ground without a thought to the ponies whose lives you ruined or outright took. Don’t you care? Is there no part of Fati in you?”
Astri’s face twisted in distaste. “How dare you. Those things you call ponies are abominations. I will fix them and put the world right again after I deal with you.”
“And now we’re back to the same problem as before.” Twilight shook her head with a groan. “You want my stars, but you don’t want me, and frankly, the feeling is mutual. I’m not about to stand by while you steal magic away from ponies to fit your archaic view of the world. Things change; get over it.”
Astri bristled at the insult and drew herself up. “I don’t want you or your ‘stars,’ broken child, I just want you to die.”
“So that’s it, then?” Twilight asked, exasperated and resigned. “In spite of crawling your way back up from the brink of nihility to a creature capable of sapience and compassion, you’re just going to blindly rage at me—and for what? To stay in the rut of hatred you’ve beat for the last two thousand years? Are you capable of anything else? I felt bad for you! I asked myself if there was anything I could have done differently! But you know what? This changes nothing; alicorn or not, the world is better off without you.”
“Bold words from one whose sanity hangs by a thread.”
“I may be a mess, but even at my worst, I have never hurt another in anger.”
“It’s sad that you think so.” Astri’s voice was dripping condescension. “Do you think your friends would agree? Your would-be lover?”
Twilight winced. “That is none of your business,” she weakly objected.
“You make it my business, spilling yourself all over the world like this!” she bellowed with such sudden, unexpected rage that Twilight was forced to take a step back. “Do you even know how many bits and pieces of ‘Twilight Sparkle’ there are floating around thinking half-formed thoughts and whinging at anypony who can hear them? Do you think I want to be inundated with echoes of the pathetic temper-tantrum you’re throwing over your inability to woo a mare who already loves you?”
“You’re hardly the pony to be doling out relationship advice!” Twilight countered. “At least I told her how I feel! At least I didn’t kill millions, destroy all civilization and throw the world into a chaos age over an unrequited crush.”
“No,” Astri answered, reigning herself in, but still glowering at Twilight with hate-filled eyes. “Instead you blanket the world, corrupting every living thing with your power. You pretend your hooves are clean when every injustice and inequality lays firmly on your withers.”
Twilight almost laughed. “Corrupting them with power? Magic gives everypony something special to help them achieve their dreams. You have no right to talk about ponies abusing power when you endorsed slavery!”
“Slander!” she cried, as if genuinely insulted. “Slavery implies theft of personal autonomy, which could not be further from the—”
“Oh just shut up already!” Twilight interrupted, fuming and sick of this empty back-and-forth.
Astri’s train of thought seemed to get knocked off kilter at the interruption, but it didn’t take long for her face to heat up and twist into a scowl. “Then die!” she shouted, firing a beam of magic from her horn and striking Twilight straight in the chest.
♦ ♦ ♦
“Eep!” Rarity danced back on the tips of her hooves, half in shock, half doing her best to avoid the splash of stardust that came from Twilight’s dissolution, though the real issue was something she could not avoid—attracting the attention of ‘Astri.’ “Well, I never…! How rude!” Also, her mouth. Her mouth was an even bigger issue. “Really, my dear, what was even the point of that?”
Astri looked at Rarity like she had sprouted a second head—not as strongly as any other pony in the same situation, since as Rarity understood it, the mare had had a second head herself for longer than written history, but she still displayed a significant measure of confusion. “The point? Were you not listening, or has relying on the broken child’s magic addled your mortal brain?”
“Yes, yes,” Rarity said, rolling her eyes. “You take some sort of categorical offense to her for being ‘broken’ and ‘corrupting’ ponies with her magic in spite of the fact that your sisters did the same thing some time in the past, and you’re more to blame for spreading magic than she is in any case. As you implied, I was present and heard you quite clearly. What I have not been able to reason—and I’ll phrase it differently this time for your benefit—is what you believe you have achieved by blasting my friend into her constituent stardust?”
“Ignorant mortal!” she shouted, stomping one hoof in aggression. “Do you imagine that she will simply recover as a true alicorn would? No, she lacks true omnipresence; everything she is was in the form I just destroyed. Face it—she is dead, and she died without so much as a struggle like the fragile, insignifi—”
And that’s when Astri was blasted through a previously-intact section of the panoramic window by a half-solidified Twilight Sparkle.
“Oh dear.” Rarity crept daintily closer to the edge of the floor in order to peek down in an attempt to spot the other alicorn, but she couldn’t see close enough to the base of the tower to see anything, though there probably wasn’t anything to see. Indeed, no sooner did she raise her sights to the sky than the two-tone figure came swooping down, crashing back into the throne room and throwing Rarity out the window.
She halted still in the air a few ponylengths away from the building, held up by the majority of her dress that was still inside the building. She hesitated, chewing at her lip as she looked down at the distant ground and back inside, where Twilight and ‘Astri’ had gone back to arguing. She rather doubted she would be much help in the middle of all that, and she really needed to talk to Celestia or Luna.
After pausing for a theatric, put-upon sigh, Rarity took a deep breath and screamed as she resumed her ballistic arc away from the palace window as if no time had passed, her dress billowing out behind her.
☾ ☾ ☾
“It does seem to be a greater issue than I had anticipated,” Luna was saying as she and Spike left the ex-library. “Presuming that the key to breaking this ‘cutie barrier’ is for one to achieve true oneness and parity with their special talent, and that Rarity’s special talent is to bring out the beauty in things, then it’s likely that further integrating her into high society would actually be detrimental in the short term with only a small chance of her finding a worthwhile subject of her talents. We could curate a selection of ponies for her by pulling them from further afield, but it remains to be seen if being too manipulative of the situations we place her in would have the opposite effect, as has been observed with cutie marks from time to time.”
“You know…” Spike mused, crossing his arms and thumbing his chin as they walked. “This all requires magic, and magic, cutie marks and all the rest are originally alicorn things, right? An immortal pony like Rainbow Dash might not be an alicorn, but do you think you went through what made her immortal?”
Luna pursed her lips, thinking. “Sorry. Such would be useful to know, but I recall very little from that far back.”
Spike was silent for a moment before he spoke with an unexpected morose concern. “Does that happen to everyone that lives that long?” he asked.
Luna blinked. She hadn’t anticipated a question like that, though she probably should have. “Ah… well,” she dithered, pausing to collect her thoughts. “It is not as if the recording of events in one’s mind deteriorate over time until they are gone. Memory is like a web of connections, and it is these connections rather than the memories themselves that have importance to us. Things that are important—things that we continue adding new connections to and things whose connections we revisit time and time again—these are the things that we will remember until the end of time.
“Even so, we are not automatons; we cannot simply maintain each and every connection each day, no matter how hard we may try at times, even to the detriment of the present. Eventually, the chain of events weaken and you can no longer find one strong enough to directly recall the third dinner you shared with your childhood paramour. Even then, however, the memories are not lost; a recital of events, a passage of music or a particular scent can provide the connection to something you thought irrecoverably forgotten—and that to another dozen things, and so on.
“It does sadden me that I can no longer bring to mind my mother’s face and the simple times of my foalhood, but the continual forging of new memories and new connections—that is what it means to live.” Luna paused to take a breath and let her message sink in. “Also, Twilight pretty much has an archival copy of every single pony’s life and memories back to the inception of pony magic, limited only by her organizational skills, so there is that.”
Spike’s mouth hung open for a pregnant moment before snapping audibly shut. “Right,” he said, flushed with embarrassment and putting up a brave face to ignore it.
“Speaking of Twilight,” Luna said, jumping back to the previous subject. “There is her own ascension to compare to this new immortality, though we actually know very little of it in spite of it’s recency. In fact, this situation may yet tell us more about her, rather than the other way around.
“In stages, she was born, gained her cutie mark, developed physical alicorn features and finally developed magical alicorn features. The change that Rainbow Dash has undergone is most like the last stage, but in Twilight’s case, it was triggered by—or at least coincided with—the first remanifestation of her body, which was likely a different mechanic entirely. Given that Twilight’s gift of stars has made this transformation more accessible to her friends, I would assume that Twilight herself would have had no resistance to achieving it.”
Spike gave a thoughtful hmm. “Then couldn’t Twilight jump-start the transformation by giving Rarity a bunch more stars? Temporarily?”
Luna halted in place to consider this. “Quite possibly,” she said, resuming walking. “On the other hoof, Twilight did say that the reason she felt she could do what she did was due to being able to feel the hole left behind by the Elements of Harmony. There is the risk that this ‘hole’ would not be able to endure the sheer enormity of the stars required to stimulate the process. She could slowly increase the magnitude over a period of time in order to purposefully stretch the hole out as the Elements of Harmony did, but then we would end up back where we started, wherein the hole would leave her feeling fatigued and empty once the stars required to reach that critical mass have been removed.”
“So, uhh…” Spike seemed to have some difficulty parsing the explanation. “What you’re saying is—she could probably do it, but it might take some time and require another permanent investment of stars.”
Luna nodded. “Precisely.”
“And,” Spike added with a grimace. “If Twilight goes around giving Rarity’s… hole… a second… filling… you just know Rainbow Dash is going to want in on it too, even though she’s already immortal… and she’s gonna make sure the rest of them know it, too, so Twilight would have to get everypony involved just to keep things from getting out of hoof.”
Luna let out a huff of annoyance. “She does seem to be the source of much unnecessary drama.”
“Ehh.” Spike gave a shrug. “She’s not that bad most of the time. Everypony has hangups that cause problems once in a while, just in different ways. Rarity—well, okay, no, bad example; even I can admit that drama follows her like a pampered puppy. Fluttershy, though? She normally avoids drama like the plague, but there was this one time when they went to the spa; even though—”
“Rarity is coming,” Luna interrupted.
Spike almost didn’t notice. “Exact—wait, what?”
She swiveled her ear and listened. “She appears to be screaming your name.”
“Abuh?” was Spike’s composed reply.
“Spiiiiiiiiiiiike!” came Rarity’s cry as she rounded a corner bringing her onto the same street as the ex-library. At first, Luna thought that Rarity was being chased by some couturesque monstrocity. Then she saw that the thing was wrapped around her, having already caught her. It was only when the panicked mare saw them and began to slow down that the true nature of her attire finally became clear.
Luna’s response was to rear up, thrust her forehooves into the air and yell, “Success!”
☾ ☾ ☾
“Princess!” Rarity exclaimed, slowing to a trot and panting to catch her breath as Spike ran out to see to her. “Thank goodness you’re already here! There is—well, you might say we have a slight problem.”
Luna’s heart sank at hearing those words. Well, it had been obvious that there was a problem, but… “This problem… is it named Twilight Sparkle?”
“That… is the question,” she said, glancing back in the direction of the Ponyville Palace with a look of concern and worry; an action that seemed pointless to Luna with Rarity’s dress in the way, though perhaps not with whatever magic was at work. “She is definitely involved,” Rarity said, leaning on Spike as she paused for a breath. “But, ah, you do recall Gemini? That one stellar being who—yes, yes, of course you do. Well, it would seem that she has ‘returned greater and more powerful than ever before’ as an alicorn calling herself Astri, and the two of them are having a little tiff… which is to say, they have been alternating between yelling and trying to vaporize each other just a tiny bit.”
“Gemini—an alicorn?” Luna asked. The combination of bafflement, concern and several other emotions brought her mind to a halt, and she sat for a moment to think. It was a relief that it was only a surprise rogue alicorn and not Twilight herself that was the problem, yet still, an alicorn was an alicorn and they did not precisely have the Elements of Harmony to fall back on. Rather paradoxically, Luna wasn’t sure if Harmony herself would actually be of any use, with the shape she was in. “That is troubling,” she said, raising her eyes to look back the way Rarity had come, as if she, too, could see the palace from here. “What is she the manifestation of?”
“She claimed to have recovered ‘the greatest of her body’ from beneath Las Pegasus and, I assume, the other crater that appeared south of Baltimare.” Rarity displayed an obvious shiver of distaste. “There is a moon in her mane, like yours, but it’s more… crude.”
Luna wasn’t sure what to do with that information. Another mystery, then, as there was no moon in the daylight sky, nor was there one in the umbra.
At least… she didn’t think there was one in the umbra. She would have noticed something like that, right? The previous night had only been an overpowering maelstrom of fear and worry; it wasn’t as if a quick check would find—nope, there it was, clear as night.
Rarity was right; it was a spotted mess. Looking at it with the dark and light sides split down the middle, it almost seemed normal, but from the light side it was as if the moon was breaking apart, while the dark side looked like a hollow ring of moonrock. It reminded her of the night when Twilight’s stars had been revealed, though this time she knew intellectually that her own moon had not changed. Still, it was something she had never expected to see… and she was absolutely not checking it out.
Abruptly, she jerked her attention out of the umbra and she stood back up. “If Twilight is fighting this alicorn, we cannot be wasting time here! Come, we must—”
“W—wait!” Rarity shouted with great hesitation. She seemed troubled, but also not willing to keep quiet about something. “I’m not certain, but I don’t think Astri actually is Gemini, exactly. When she appeared… she didn’t come in from the hole in the throne room. We were talking over your mutual issues and Twilight… she became distressed. She… stumbled, and it was as if part of her stumbled further back than the rest. I think that Astri split off from Twilight, and neither of them know it.”
A sickening wave of vertigo overtook Luna as the words spilled out of Rarity and the premature sense of relief she’d had inverted to form a weight in her stomach. She… She had failed? She had known something like this was coming for as long as she had cared about Twilight, always watching for the signs, always waiting for something she could actually do to forestall it, and now it had come to pass.
Luna wasn’t sure if it would have been worse if she had simply not been present, but she had been; she had seen the crack split Twilight in two and she had shied away in fear. Because of that, Twilight had fled, and Luna had let her. She had thought it proof of Twilight’s strength, but just because Twilight had not broken in the same way that Luna had did not mean that she hadn’t broken.
No. It wasn’t too late. She could do… something. That there was still a part of Twilight that was acting as normal meant that there was a part of her that would listen—or so she hoped. There was no guarantee that the semblance of sanity was actually meaningful, but she had to try.
When she had provisionally rejected Twilight, Luna had spoken of her own feelings—her own sacrifices—and in doing so she had forgotten the meaning behind those sacrifices. She had vowed to support Twilight and be there when she was needed. In truth, she had already been committed to the very thing that Twilight had been asking for, and yet then, too, she had failed and hurt Twilight in the process.
She was needed. She had been needed then, and she was needed now. It was, perhaps, a little egotistical to be so assured of one’s own importance to somepony, but was that not love? Not just to need, but also to know that you are needed in return? She would be there for Twilight and they would overcome this together.
“We should go,” Luna declared with a certainty that she had not felt for some time as she started into a canter and ruffled her wings in preparation for flight. “We have dallied too long already. If we’re to have any chance to head this off with words, I feel we must do so before sunset falls and things get out of hoof.”
“Princess… I’m not sure words will work. As soon as Astri arrived and they started trading insults, it was as if I wasn’t even in the room with them.”
“Then write Celestia and pray that the city remain on the morrow; I will fall before I fail Twilight a third time.”
☾ ☾ ☾
Luna flew on ahead of Spike and Rarity, who had taken her advice to heart and stayed behind. As soon as she breached the roof level, it became clear that things were already getting out of hoof. The air was thick with magic, and as Luna approached, she witnessed something that ought to have been impossible.
Twilight had blasted Astri to discorporation… and Astri had reformed.
Had Astri been a normal alicorn like Luna, she would have been unable to remanifest with her moon still inside the umbra. That would have given them at least some time to calm Twilight and broach matters delicately. If Astri was remanifesting from the magic that Twilight was producing, however, not only would it make things much more difficult, but it was also another sign that Rarity was correct; what Twilight was fighting here was herself.
The question, then was what Astri’s true goal was. If she was a reflection of Twilight’s darker side, her resentment and discontent, then what kind of insidious thoughts must she be speaking in between each exchange of magic? How would she try to corrupt Twilight? Would Astri attempt to force herself on Twilight as Solaria had Somni, or would it go the other way, with the counterfeit alicorn encouraging Twilight to take what she desired from Luna on her own? Would Luna allow her to, and would doing so undermine Astri or prove her right?
Luna shook her head, bringing herself back into the now. Now was not the time to second guess everything. Regardless of Astri using Twilight’s magic and regardless of the situation, the full access to their magic that nightfall would bring would only escalate the situation, so Luna wasted no time crashing into the palace. The throne room was a wreck. You could no longer even tell where Twilight had sent her throne through the window, and the clear crystal floor had been blasted away to bare the black, geode-esque surface below in most of the room.
“Stop!” Luna shouted with a touch of the Royal Canterlot Voice as crystal rubble crunched underhoof. “Twilight,” Luna exclaimed, almost begging… in a dignified manner, of course. “Whatever she says, do not listen! You are a good pony—do not let fear and self doubt cloud your judgement!”
Both Astri and Twilight had both frozen in place when Luna had interrupted, and they continued to just stare at her long after her impassioned plea had stopped echoing in the cavernous room.
“Well, duh,” Twilight eventually said, followed by a bemused scoff. “Have you listened to her talk? The only thing she makes me want to do is wring her neck.”
Luna gaped. “What? But—” Had Rarity been wrong? What else could a false simulacrum want, if not some kind of psychological deception?
“I don’t have an agenda, I just want the broken child gone,” Astri declared, as if reading Luna’s mind. With a cruel sneer lit by her glowing horn, she beat her wings forward, throwing herself out of what had once been a panoramic window and was now a hole stretching nearly half around the circumference of the palace. Almost at the same moment that Luna realized what she was doing, Astri shot a blast of magic larger than ever before at the pair of them.
It was Luna’s first instinct to shield Twilight from the black-spotted beam of white magic, but Twilight had much the same idea and hadn’t been caught flat-hoofed, having been facing off with Astri for some time now and thanks to that, the beam missed them entirely.
They crashed to the ground a moment later, landing in a crater left by one of Astri’s previous blasts with Luna on her back and Twilight on top of her. For one frozen moment their eyes met and everything was quiet; they weren’t visible from outside, and it was the perfect chance to tell Twilight about Astri.
She didn’t; she just laid there under Twilight breathing heavily, wanting nothing more than to prolong this brief connection before Twilight would inevitably come to her senses and remember to hate her.
The moment stretched out, and Twilight’s jaw clenched and Luna’s heart caught in her throat, but instead of the expected hate, Twilight’s expression just melted into a conflicted look just short of sadness.
Luna swallowed, her mouth slightly open, and her only thought was that this was not a failure as she—jerked back when the ground shuddered and the palace began to crumble beneath them.
✶ ✶ ✶
With so much of her magic and stardust in the air, Twilight could all but see the disaster as it happened, even with the sunlight interfering with her senses. Astri’s beam of magic had gone straight through the floor and out the side of the palace several floors below them; now, those floors were crumbling and the upper portion of the tower was coming down on top of them.
Twilight shielded Luna as best she could amidst the cataclysm of falling crystal. If Luna was discorporated, she wouldn’t be able to return until nightfall. Really, she should not have come, but… Twilight… was glad that she had. There was no time for her to reconcile what Rarity had said with her feelings and what had just happened as the top of the tower crashed down on the solid floors below and kicked everything between them the side as the tower folded on itself.
To Twilight’s unreserved relief, her magic held and the two of them managed to catch themselves with their wings as they found themselves sailing through mostly open air. Twilight felt terrible for being unable to mitigate the damage that the falling tower would do, but she had been distracted at the time… inside of it… with an alicorn underneath her, but that had been the distraction so maybe it didn’t count.
Thankfully, every other alicorn, demigod and immortal on the face of Equestria had been less occupied at the time, and had all shown up to help. Celestia, of course, was a blinding light in the sky slowing the fall of the tower, but less expected was Applejack doing almost as much at the crown of a massive tree that was growing up to meet it.
Twilight squinted, and—yep, Applejack was probably immortal, too. That was not going to be a fun discussion.
The others, too, were doing their part, though Discord only seemed to be slowly helping an old mare out of the area and the less Twilight looked at what Pinkie Pie was doing, the better. It all seemed to be going well until she felt something sharp pierce her barrel from below.
It wasn’t painful—not exactly. Rather, there was some pain, but nothing like there should have been since any significant wound like this just dissolved into stardust. Still, it was incredibly distressing—like being bloated to the point where moving was uncomfortable, but all concentrated into one place.
Twilight curled down to look at the alicorn that had speared her from below with its horn, and from what Twilight could see of Astri’s face pressed against Twilight’s stomach, she looked smug.
“R—really?” Twilight asked with a raspy voice, the forced demanifestation around her diaphragm making speaking difficult, but she did her best to project a sense of incredulity with her words. “Blasting me to stardust… and dropping a palace on me… didn’t work… so you decided… to impale me… on your horn?”
It took Twilight a moment to realize that Luna should have done something by now. She glanced around and spotted her sprawled out on the ground below. She had not discorporated and she was moving, but it looked like Astri had injured her wing and left her to fall. The image of Luna’s bent form was so disturbing that Astri’s reply to Twilight’s question startled her.
“It would be worth it just to see the pain on your face,” she growled out with a power not unlike the Royal Canterlot Voice, loud enough for Luna to hear her. The vibration caused Twilight to grimace as it was transmitted into her gut. “But there is a point. For all that I cannot destroy you, you are still trapped in this pinch of dust you call a body. The further I scatter you afield, the exponentially longer it takes for you to reform. With the amount of power I have in my horn, it should be a good thousand years before I have to deal with you again, and by then I shall have something more permanent arranged.”
Astri didn’t even give Twilight a chance to snark back before a resonating blast crashed through her, the excruciating sensation of distentedness in her chest expanding to fill her body as the world went white.
How rude.
☾ ☾ ☾
Luna was forced to watch from the ground as Astri shattered Twilight’s form and scattered the resulting stardust to the four corners of the world; she couldn’t even scream in the condition she was in, and when Celestia took up the fight, forcing Astri out of Luna’s view, she stopped trying.
A thousand years…? Luna didn’t want to believe it—and maybe she didn’t, since Astri didn’t seem to realize that she herself was a manifest part of Twilight. If they were to have any chance of getting Twilight back, it would be through Astri. It was a small hope, but it was there; Celestia would realize this and act accordingly.
Luna… was tired; not just physically, but that too. She ached all over, especially in the wing that Astri had broken, and she just… She was tempted to simply let go; demanifest and stop hurting. Stop thinking. There wasn’t anything she could do now anyway. Still, if she did that, she’d have nothing to do but stare at Astri’s moon and feel the listless, inert flow of Twilight’s stars around her.
She would have nothing to do but think of her own thousand year exile, and wonder what it would be like for Twilight. She knew from experience just how long a thousand years was, but would Twilight even be aware of it? After being struck by the dragon that Gemini had awoken, she had described her experience as simply waking up after a time.
She wasn’t sure if that would be for the best, or the greatest cruelty. Even presuming that Astri did not divine some way to kill them all—not entirely a foregone conclusion, as this was, after all, an insane fusion of the two alicorns who had precipitated the previous apocalypse as reproduced by a pony that was, regrettably, not all right in the head that they were talking about—even presuming that everything would work out and Twilight’s friends would all go live their immortal lives into the next millennium, it would be a cold comfort to come back to a circle of friends that would then have five thousand times the life experience she did.
Would it be selfish for Luna to put herself asleep for a thousand years in order to wait it out? Would it be romantic? It seems like something a fairytale princess would do which probably meant that it was it a bad idea. Perhaps… perhaps things would not be as bad as she thought. Twilight and Luna had, after all, forged a connection with a similar disparity, but that was with Luna coming off of her own exile. Luna’s renewed relationship with Celestia was nowhere near as promising a comparison.
Was it callous to hope that Twilight would at least be partially aware of her exile? That she could, perhaps, watch on through ponies’ stars or through their dreams? Would it be painful? Vexing? Would she return flush with wisdom and forgiveness or have a thousand years of stored up pettifogging and criticism to heap upon Luna?
Probably both.
Luna only noticed the delicate tinkling of jewelry when it sat down beside her.
“Stop,” Harmony said.
Luna blinked. “What?”
“Just stop,” she reiterated, and for a moment, Luna’s worry was replaced with bemusement. “There are times when you must act, and there are times when you must let others act in your place.”
What did that even mean? Admittedly, she had been getting carried away with the ‘what if’s’, but then, she probably had a concussion, so it was understandable. What did Harmony mean by ‘a time to act,’ though? Was she implying that Luna should not think of what would happen, but what she could do about it? Celestia had taken Harmony’s meagre existence and condensed it into a body; could Luna do the same with Twilight? Could she use Astri in the process somehow—turn her back into Twilight or split Twilight off from her? Could Celestia please stop resisting the sunset?
Wait, what was that last thing? Oh. ‘A time to act and a time to let others act for you’; could she not just say that? Luna quickly stopped trying to bring out the night and started helping prevent Astri from doing so. She felt in turns both indignant and foolish; indignant over Harmony’s games and foolish for forgetting that she had been the one to suggest that nightfall would be disastrous. As it was, bringing out the night was such an automatic thing that she didn’t even have to think about on most days, and if she was being honest with herself, the very idea that they should prolong the day rankled her no matter how logical it was; she had let go of her madness, but that didn’t mean the feelings that had fed it were gone entirely.
As Luna focused on holding back the night, she glanced skyward to check Celestia’s progress, if it could be called that. As much as Celestia prided herself on being able to resolve situations peacefully, it was clear that any and all such attempts had been rebuffed. Much like Gemini after having abandoned her stars, Astri seemed to be unable to change, desiring only one thing.
From what Luna could see, the two combatants had kept to the skies; Celestia was attempting to entrap Astri, but she wasn’t having much luck. Astri was relentless, throwing magic about with reckless abandon, forcing Celestia on the defensive, and with Rainbow Dash the only other pony present able to help in the air, Astri was mostly succeeding.
Luna glanced at Harmony, sitting there in her golden clockwork body. As an alicorn, manifesting a part of oneself as armor was an effective tactic, and like Twilight, the source of Harmony’s magic was internal. On the other hoof, she was only a fraction of the alicorn that Celestia was and had been too weak to form a body without Celestia’s help. Unlike the rest of them, she would be at real risk should anything happen to her.
Still… “Is there nothing you can do?”
Harmony’s eyes shuttered closed with a mechanical click, and she looked away from Luna. “I would—I could. There is nothing I would not give for my little light… or you, my shining light… but I fear that my presence would only provoke this phantasm, as would Discord’s, and there is little enough to be gained. For us, it is a time to let others act for us.”
Luna slackened, dropping her head back down to the ground in resignation. ‘Little enough to be gained.’ That described the situation quite clearly, didn’t it? Celestia was no closer to entrapping Astri now than she had been five minutes ago, and she was likely running out of spells to attempt if she hadn’t already. As had happened with Solaria and Somni, the day could not cage the night… only smother it.
If they had just wanted to erase Astri from existence in the same way Astri wanted to erase Twilight, then Celestia could do it; it was possible that it would still come down to that and that they would still be able to recover Twilight Sparkle if it did. Even so, neither of them would give up and let that happen until everything had been tried. Celestia had tried; Luna didn’t doubt that. She’d had her chance and done her best, and Luna would not hold it against her that it had come to naught.
Like relaxing a muscle, Luna stopped holding back the nightfall and started pushing.
The sky instantly darkened past dusk and relief flooded into Luna as her broken body dissolved into moonlight.
A new body clad in silver armor manifested and crashed into Astri, preventing her from taking advantage of the suddenly vulnerable Celestia.
It was a time to act.
✶ ✶ ✶
When Twilight regained her awareness, it wasn’t like waking up; nothing seemed to fade into existence, nor was there a fog that was lifted. If anything, it was as if the world were slowly coming into focus, though at the same time, it was that in reverse as well; a step back and a widening of perspective.
The library that she had once imagined for herself was gone; what had been a derelict and crumbling structure was now little more than a single section of flooring and a single book—a single star—floating in the otherwise empty ocean of her magic.
She wondered, idly, if this star might be one of the ones which she had chosen to be banished to back when this had all started. Procyon? Sirius? Cor Caroli? Huh, staring off into the blank distance, she wondered if she had been favoring canines in her selection. Actually, now that she thought about it, was there an Alioth both in the sky and in the Ursa Major that Twilight had given Fluttershy? Who was to say? Well, her. She was to say, she supposed.
It should have been a relief when she first spotted another star on the horizon, but instead, it just seemed to emphasize the emptiness and remind her exactly how long it might be before she would be able to manifest again. Oh, she didn’t really believe Astri’s estimate of a thousand years was anywhere near accurate; the alicorn had been wrong about many things, like the original assumption that she could not reform in the first place.
Still, it could be a very, very long time until she saw anypony again.
Until she saw Luna again.
Luna. That was such a mess. It might be that what Rarity said had struck her so strongly, or that moment they’d shared in the middle of a crumbling palace, but she didn’t know what to think any more. Well, to be fair, she hadn’t known what to think before, either, but it was just so hard to work up the same emotions as she’d had about it before that she suddenly felt very, very lost, and it had nothing to do with the lack of local landmarks. Maybe there just wasn’t enough of Twilight on this little piece of library in a vast, empty ocean of magic to actually get angry.
Had her reaction actually been all that unreasonable? Well, ‘throwing a hissy fit,’ as Rarity had called it, was probably not the ideal response to any situation, nor was refusing to hear any apology over the matter as she had done earlier that day—if it even was still the same day—so… yes; she supposed it was safe to say that there were certainly better ways that she could have handled it.
✶ ✶ ✶
Sometime between one eternity and the next, Twilight felt more than heard the soft thump of the book that she had seen on the horizon bumping up against the small section of flooring she was standing on. Had it come to her, or had she unknowingly directed herself to it? She picked it up and placed it on a shelf. The shelf hadn’t been there a moment ago, but she had gotten used to having all the shelves she needed as she needed them in her metaphorical and metaphysical library.
Two.
Two books.
Twilight all but collapsed onto her rear and curled up on herself, causing her tiny bit of library to pitch and sway in the placid and silent ocean of magic. It was that placid silence that gnawed at her the most, begging for attention, forcing her to acknowledge the absence of the one constant that had stayed with her since she had become an alicorn.
The moon.
It was rather poetic that she should lose a part of Luna that she had taken for granted. It was easy to forget that the two were one and the same, sometimes. When Luna had hated Twilight, the moon had been there; when Twilight had been avoiding Luna to hunt starbeats, the moon had been there; and when Twilight had been tearing across the world in anger and fury for being scorned… the moon had been there then, too.
Twilight wondered if she would have been so eager to spit hate and bile at Luna for rejecting her if she’d actually had to feel this chilling loneliness that night when she’d stormed off in affronted outrage. Maybe it would have tempered her temper were she to have actually felt the loss of the bonds that she had been trying to sever.
She could admit that, here and now, she wanted nothing more than to pretend the last day or two had never happened—to wake up and discover that it had all been a bad dream brought on by getting mildly tipsy at dinner with Luna, roll over in bed, kiss her on the neck and go back to sleep.
She would settle for begging her forgiveness.
The crunch and jolt of something heavier than a book colliding with her piece of library was a poor substitute, but she got herself up anyway. The source of the interruption was a larger chunk of library that seemed to have latched cater-corner onto her own. On closer inspection, Twilight found a single book displayed on a lectern and, bafflingly enough, shelves upon shelves of books surrounding it.
It seemed too good to be true. This many books…? It wasn’t as many as she normally had, but it was in the same order of magnitude, at least; this would allow her to manifest a body again!
Twilight was about to step over to the new section of library when she had a horrible thought and froze. What if these were the stars that she had lost when Astri had scattered her? The single star that she had ended up in might have been the one flung furthest—the one that took the longest to be recovered.
Had it been a thousand years plus or minus a generous margin of error already?
As Twilight took a tentative step onto the larger section of library, the hair on the back of her neck stood on end, and she began to think that there were even bigger matters at hoof here than poor luck in regards to a probability distribution graph.
This was not her library. Every step she took, the creek of the floorboards and the goosebumps on her legs whispered that she wasn’t welcome, but nothing stopped her. If it was aware, it wasn’t aware of her. The animal ferocity in the air led her to suspect that maybe this was a starbeast.
The book sitting on the lectern with a two-tone crumbling moon on its cover revealed that she was half right.
But that didn’t make sense; Astri was an alicorn now; even if the chunks of moonrock that Astri had made her moon out of had been a part of Twilight, they weren’t any more—Luna’s moon wasn’t—and this wasn’t enough stars for a moon anyway!
Unable to stop herself, Twilight reached out to the book on the lectern; it thrummed with power at her touch and she yanked her hoof away. In that brief moment of connection, she had seen Luna adorned in an ancient-looking set of silver armor facing off against Astri. This… was this happening right now?
Chewing at her lip in trepidation, she reached out to the book once more and opened it.
☾ ☾ ☾
Luna felt her ear momentarily liquefy into moonlight as she dodged around another blast of raw magic shot from Astri’s horn and returned one in kind. It was rather telling that the supposed alicorn could only really rely on brute force, adding further credence to the conclusion that it was just some part of Twilight that was lashing out—and not even a part of Twilight that was actually Gemini.
The Gemini that Luna had fought in the desert of dreams had been single-minded and angry, yes—she hadn’t relied on any significant spells either—but she had, at least, been a canny combattant, bobbing and weaving in an inequine manner, making best use of her metaphysical form and the darkness to her advantage.
Astri’s great tactical coup, on the other hoof, had been the challenging act of catching Twilight and Luna unawares while they watched what had most recently passed for their home crumble and fall… though if she were being honest with herself, Luna was not actually all that distressed by the destruction of the palace. There were only a hoof-ful of memories that they had tied up in it, chief of them Twilight finally opening up to Luna about her worries, but the backdrop to those were unimportant. It would, if anything, be a financial drain on the city to replace it… though as she darted around and through the massive tree that had grown up around the collapsing tower, fending off Astri’s blasts, Luna thought that perhaps such matters would solve themselves when all was said and done.
Now to just get through that saying and doing.
Mostly the doing, for now.
At first, it seemed as though Luna had taken over from Celestia just to follow in her hoofsteps; Luna’s milky white beams of moonlight dueling blow for blow with Astri’s similar ashen magic spotted with darkness. It was easy to think of Astri’s magic as being somehow tainted or corrupted for its appearance, and in a way, it was, but it was the structure, not the darkness itself that hinted as Astri’s instability. The duality of light and dark in their moons was one that both Luna and Astri shared; Astri was simply unable to separate the two, and until the moon in Luna’s mane had turned its dark side in her fear of Twilight, Luna had never considered its magic as anything but a backdrop.
It was not a backdrop that struck Astri sight unseen in the wake of one of Luna’s bright white bolts, nor was it any simple destructive blast. It came from above, all but invisible against the night sky, throwing her down onto the top of the palace tower. The dark blast didn’t impact Astri as much as it flowed over her, weighing her down and thickening the air with Luna’s magic, pressing down on Astri until she couldn’t move.
Luna touched down on the tower with the heavy thunk of her armored greaves on crystal as Astri thrashed and snarled, attempting to fight the force keeping her in place.
“Neither Twilight nor I were happy with how she handled things in the desert of dreams,” Luna said, slowly approaching Astri. “It leaves a bad taste in one’s mouth to try and talk somepony into giving up on life, and yet here we are again in the same situation.”
“Well, you needn’t concern yourself,” Astri growled with difficulty. “You have no chance of doing that.”
Luna let out a heavy sigh and sat down at the edge of the effect that she had trapped Astri in. “You must know that the problem you pose isn’t whether we can defeat you or even destroy you, but the question of what to actually do with you.”
“Funny, I was going to say the same thing,” she snarked back. “It would be a pity to have to go without another alicorn for companionship for a few thousand years, but I think it’s for the best. I’ll take some of your moon for myself, of course, but I’m sure the next you will be much more amenable; I’ll make sure of it.”
Luna wrinkled her nose in distaste. “Why do you act like this?” she asked, half-rhetorically. “Somni and Fati, for all their flaws, were polite and reasonable ponies; perhaps you are supposed to represent the worst of both, as Solaria seemed to be.”
“Represent?” Astri asked, uncertain what Luna was implying. “I don’t represent anything. If you find me distasteful, believe me, the feeling is mutual.”
Luna took a moment to look out over the broken, tilted shape of the tower rooftop. “It seems somewhat apropos; this is where I first told Twilight the story of where I got the name Nightmare Moon. I told her that it was an old mares’ tale; a story meant to frighten children and teach them to share—a tale to lay bare some of the flaws of ponykind so that we could recognize them.”
“And yet, I turned out to be far too real,” Astri said with a grin.
Luna shook her head. “No, you’re not.”
The look on Astri’s face made it clear she was preparing herself for a tirade, so Luna cut her off.
“You called Twilight ‘broken,’ and while that isn’t the word that I would use… as much as I love her—as much wish it were otherwise—it’s true; you are proof of that.
“Though I expect it will be with the same futility as Twilight informing Gemini of the fact, you—are—not—real. You are, at most, a piece of her; at worst, a delusion. You would not be able to reform from stardust as you do, otherwise. You would be a better mage—a more clever duelist. You would have a more nuanced perspective—more engaging rhetoric. You are supposed to be hundreds of thousands of years old! Do you remember them, or are you little more than a superficial bogeymare splintered off from the troubled mind of a pony who skipped to the last chapter of the life you think you’ve lived?”
✶ ✶ ✶
Twilight jerked away from the book, stumbling back in shock. Astri… wasn’t real? It would explain how this chunk of library was here to begin with, and how she was watching events unfold, but what did that mean for her?
It was one thing to have unclaimed bits and pieces of herself running around as myths and legends, but now… now, after all the effort that she had put in trying to consolidate herself she was actually falling apart? She was going around just… shedding irrational sororicidal alicorns who want nothing more than to erase her and everything she had touched from existence? It wasn’t news to her that her fragmentary state wasn’t healthy, and of course, the last day especially had been bad, but she didn’t think that it had been ‘spawning conceptual abominations’ bad.
…
No. No, that was a lie; it absolutely had been that bad, it just hadn’t seemed that way at the time… no, that wasn’t right either, she just… hadn’t been able to see it? Not even that; more that she hadn’t been able to see any other way to be.
Was that why she was now able to admit to herself how badly she’d been acting? Not because she’d had any particular epiphany, but because she’d been reduced to this single star? Well, two, now, and hadn’t finding that second one just done wonders for her state of mind at the time?
No, again, no. She… she couldn’t just second guess everything like that. Even… even if it was true, it was her recovering her senses; she shouldn’t feel cheated out of her achievement just because she’d made what progress she had on a good day.
But… what would she do? She couldn’t just stay this way with nothing more than two stars to rub together; would she have to make of herself a moon? She had considered it before, but it would require doing to the entire world what Astri… no, what she had unknowingly done to Las Pegasus. She would… No, she didn’t have to think about what she would do before she let that happen, because there was nopony else who was going to make it happen… Except Astri, she supposed, or something like her, since Astri in particular didn’t seem to want her stars, the ingrate.
Twilight glanced back at Astri’s book on the lectern with some concern. What was happening out there while she dithered here? Last she had seen, Luna had had Astri restrained, but there was no sign here of anything changing. Twilight was tempted to go back and check what was going on, but if there was anything she could do, she needed to be actually doing it.
Of course, the only thing that she could actually think to do was the obvious. Astri was her, meaning that this this chunk of library was also her; she was inside Astri right now; had the single star that Twilight had ended up as just by chance been taken into Astri’s body, or was the connection more metaphysical than that? Either way, could she take control of it? Take over Astri and manifest herself out of her body?
…And did she want to?
It was a scary thought, being relatively sane and standing on the precipice of madness, preparing to jump. Would she backslide? Would all the incredulity and resentment come flooding back? No, it wasn’t as if she had a second personality running around… other than Astri… but that was a whole different issue. No, she couldn’t say that she wouldn’t make new bad decisions, get into new arguments, but there was no invisible hoof pushing her to fail.
It was okay. It would be fine. After this—after Astri—they would have no choice but to do something about her. They would all either find a way to fix her, or… keep her from hurting anypony else, at least. Embodying the stars in the night sky was an option, but even that was still just the same thing in a different disposition. It still wasn’t her.
Enough. She was stalling. Rather than give herself another reason to hesitate, Twilight took a deep breath and remembered what it was like that very first time to take over the Ursa Major’s stars from the inside of its stomach. Just find the smallest bit, let her essence wrap around it and—nothing happened. She bit down and yanked harder, and just… nothing.
It was like trying to pick up a coin that someone had glued to the sidewalk.
With her teeth.
Huffing in irritation, she stomped over to the lectern and attempted to take her frustrations out on it; the book failed to budge, but what she saw during that brief moment of contact drained the color from her face.
☾ ☾ ☾
“I am growing tired of this,” Astri said, close to having burned herself out from all the constant snapping and snarling. “Have you finished failing to find something inside me that isn’t there, or would you like to make a fourth attempt?”
Luna dropped her head and let out a breath. The tower rooftop was now significantly more crowded than it had ever been before, with Celestia and Twilight’s friends having joined her in her attempt to use Astri to recover Twilight Sparkle. Harmony and Discord, of course, had elected to continue avoiding Astri for the time being.
As for Astri, she had, of course, been predictably obstinate. In spite of having to listen to all of her ranting and raving, Luna wasn’t actually sure at his point if Astri actually still believed in her identity, or if she had been convinced by Luna’s argument and simply didn’t care, reasoning that if she did as she had intended and eliminated every trace of Twilight from the world, that there would be nothing left to contest her right to the title of alicorn.
Celestia came up beside Luna and draped a wing over her. “Perhaps she is correct, sister; this doesn’t seem to be getting us anywhere, and we can’t keep her trapped here like this forever.”
“Hah!” Astri barked. “I told you!”
Luna shook off Celestia’s wing and turned to her. “No, we cannot give up after a hoof-ful of tries. This creature, detestable as she is, could be our best link to Twilight Sparkle.”
Celestia shook her head solemnly. “I forsee only difficulty in using one so strong-willed as she for any such endeavor, and so long as she exists, she is a potential danger to Twilight and all our little ponies.”
Luna pressed her lips into a line. “True.”
“Wait, what?” Astri said, her eyes widening.
Celestia nodded. “Indeed. If, in the future, we do come up with something that requires a part of Twilight, there is a good chance that one of the remaining starbeasts will fill the role just as well and with less complaining.”
Luna’s eyes brightened at that. “Aha! I had not thought of that—yes, that should work just as well. Even if we require a starbeast that she has claimed dominion of, we do have the ones she gifted her friends; there is nothing unique about Astri in that regard.”
“What?” Astri repeated, looking around in panic.
“You mean we can finally stop listening to this nag snap at us constantly?” Rainbow Dash asked, inserting herself into the conversation with an eager wing-assisted hop. “Sign me up; whatever happens, I’m sure Twilight can set things straight after whatever ritual it is we need to resurrect her—I mean, so long as it’s not a virgin sacrifice. You’re gonna have to find somepony else for that, obviously.”
Celestia turned a questioning glance to Luna. “Your spell will keep her trapped, even after her body discorportates to stardust, correct?”
“Yes,” she affirmed.
“Good; it’ll probably take several minutes of sustained power to denature her magic,” Celestia said. “She seems to be more like Twilight in that regard, so I believe it will be enough. I would very much like to avoid having to destroy her moon; it could be useful for Twilight, and even small as it is, the collateral damage would be significant.”
“Sister, please do not phrase it like that,” Luna said with an unhappy scowl. “I’d rather not be reminded that you have ways to kill Twilight.”
“You—what about me?” Astri shouted. “You’re talking about killing me! And my moon is not small!”
“Yes, we are,” Rarity chimed in.
“And, um, it kind of is,” Fluttershy added.
“Ah don’t like it,” Applejack prevaricate. “But ya’ll didn’t think that you could just go ’round tryin’ t’kill alicorns and threatnin’ ponies’ magic and we’d let you off with a warnin’, did’ja? Ah can’t chip in on if yer real or not, but the way ah see it, y’all’ve made it real clear what happens if we let you out of our sight. Ah wish we could just zap you with the Elements of Harmony and ya’ll’d be made good or turned back into Twilight, but… that ship has sailed.”
Astri looked from one pony to the next unable to believe that they would all condone this. Quickly, her eyes settled on the one pony who hadn’t spoken up.
The look on Pinkie Pie’s face was incredibly, soul-crushingly sad, but she said nothing. Applejack set a hoof on her withers and turned her away. “C’mon Pinks, you don’t need to see this.”
“No!” Astri shouted, straining against the magic holding her down. “You can’t! I’ll—I’ll—”
Celestia shot Luna a weary, almost apologetic look and let out a sigh. “I’m willing to listen. If you have some way we can trust you, then—”
“—I’ll kill you all!” Astri shouted with enough power in her voice to stun everypony present as she heaved everything she had against the force restraining her with a great, primal roar. Luna still had her eyes closed when everything went to tartarus; when she recovered herself enough to look around, it was to a shocking scene—several ponies had been bowled over and Celestia was lying on the ground, gored down the side by Astri’s horn.
Astri herself seemed to have vanished, the sunlight leaking from Celestia’s grievous wound making it difficult to see into the distance. By the time Luna spotted her, it was too late; there was little enough of her body to spot, the rest of it having been converted into a stark white beam of moonlight streaking skyward.
Luna’s mein wilted as she watched what she believed to be Astri escaping into the night.
It was quickly replaced with sudden terror when she realized just what was at the end of that moonbeam.
Her moon.
Her.
Luna cringed for the second time in quick succession as there was a great, shrieking crash as the light struck home. Her heart beat madly inside her chest in the resulting silence as she waited to feel herself shatter… and waited… and waited. It took more than a few more beats of her heart for her to realize that she remained whole and untouched.
The same could not be said for Astri or what she had struck.
A black and white figure fell out of the sky amidst a rain of bent and twisted gold.